Among the trove at Google are newspapers from the 1970s, including this edition of The Vancouver Sun from June 20, 1970, just about a month after Lon Nol had ousted Prince Norodom Sihanouk as Cambodia’s head of state.
By that time, Sihanouk had taken refuge in Peking. And the world was just coming to fully understand Cambodia’s “mercurial” leader.
When I would visit a Cambodian farm or factory, and it would be known that I had met Sihanouk, the workers would look at me with mouths agape and misty eyes and touch my hand and ask, what had he said, what was he like?
The diplomatic corps admired him for strictly opposite reasons. They knew him as a warm and extremely generous host, a man of sensitivity and genuine thoughtfulness. This was his social aspect. By day they wrestled with his true character … that tough, analytic and extremely knowledgeable master of the Asian political game. This was the Sihanouk that has until recently been largely ignored: playboy princes make much better newspaper copy.
There’s more at the link, including additional stories about Cambodia from the period.
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